One Hundred Names for Love Review | Books | EW.com

One Hundred Names for Love

type:

Book

Current Status:

In Season

author:

Diane Ackerman

publisher:

W.W. Norton

genre:

Memoir

We gave it a B+

Throughout their marriage, the author and her writer husband, Paul Smith, expressed their love through poems and puns. Theirs was an affair of words until a stroke snatched Paul’s grasp of language. With her husband reduced to bleating one hopeless syllable — ”mem!” — Ackerman found herself thrust into the most depleting of roles: ”Caregiver. That word should weigh more than others on a page, sag it down a bit and wrinkle it.” In the beginning, One Hundred Names for Love itself sags under the weight of hospital beds and dire prognoses. But the end is a triumph, and their indomitable romance one to envy. B+